


I'VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Love Triangle, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 03:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short little Legacy-related fic, requested by darkfire-blade @ tumblr, looking for Anders in the middle of a love triangle. How do you write love triangles again? <i>Fenris could not forget who Anders was, and so he watched him with more care than he gave their surroundings, or even the shambling, cumbersome gait of their peculiar guide. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	I'VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE

‘After a while, you just get tired of it, you know?’

Fenris flicked the hair from his eyes, studying a rancid brown stain on the far wall of the cave. Hawke had mentioned an expedition to the Deep Roads many years ago, back when they had first met, but he had not required Fenris’s aid for it. There were books written on the subject, but Fenris had not chosen to read them; even the dwarf’s stories paled in comparison to the sights, and the _smells._

Darkspawn blood bubbled and hissed like a magister’s poison—their final weapon, still dangerous even after death.

 _Taint taint taint taint **taint**_ ; Anders’s words echoed through the cavern, glancing off the smooth stone and reverberating in Fenris’s ears.

His shoulders twitched together, the steel crossbar of his sword resting cool against his skin.

‘I…do now,’ Fenris answered, then moved down the narrow tunnel before Hawke and his brother could stray too far ahead.

*

Fenris could not forget who Anders was, and so he watched him with more care than he gave their surroundings, or even the shambling, cumbersome gait of their peculiar guide. The mage’s face was pale as soured milk, and he worried at the bandages on his sleeves, for lack of any better purpose for his hands. Every now and then he twitched and glanced around, as though hounded by invisible flies.

Or invisible voices.

Fenris dogged his footsteps like Hawke’s loyal mabari, or perhaps more like the wolf for which he’d been named, listening with one ear for the clatter of genlock shields, or the throaty cries of hurlock warriors. Ahead of them, Hawke’s head was bent in conversation with his brother, both of them dark-haired, like the left and right wings of a glossy crow.

‘Control yourself,’ Fenris advised. The suddenness of his words were meant to wrench Anders free from his tortured thoughts. ‘You’ve been living with one voice in your head all this time—one more should not prove your undoing.’

Anders smiled wanly, but there was the flash of a familiar chill in his eyes—not the man, but the _other_ half of him. Once Justice, now Vengeance, as far as anyone understood, or as far as anyone needed to. Fenris stared back, unwilling to blink.

‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Anders said. ‘‘The more the merrier’ isn’t a principle that applies to my _mind._ ’

‘No.’ Fenris rolled a dry sound of contempt in the back of his throat. ‘It is your one mark of distinction, and you cannot even manage _that_ properly.’

His words cut keenly, as perhaps they were designed to, but then, Fenris was accustomed to wielding a sharpened blade. He knew when to draw back, before the wounds turned fatal.

The color returned to Anders’s cheeks, whatever spirits haunted him receding beneath the bluster of his anger. Hawke’s shout drew Fenris forward to battle, and he lunged into the fray, lyrium throbbing in time with the sudden flare of magic at his back.

*

Corypheus was not only a darkspawn, but a Tevinter magister as well. Staring into his twisted features, Fenris had gripped the hilt of his sword so tightly his fingers creaked.

They were a long way from Minrathous, but Fenris heard whispers of his own every now and then. Even the winds felt like a slaver’s hands tugging at his clothes, pulling taut the once-slack chain.

Sebastian would have enjoyed the history in this—the chance to perform his own exalted purge of the very monsters that had perverted the Golden City. But Sebastian was gone now, and if he ever returned, it would be as _their_ enemy, much like Corypheus.

And they would defeat him, much like Corypheus. Without the necessary closure—but Hawke believed in taking whatever steps he could, and also in living to see just one more day.

When Fenris glanced over his shoulder, he found no succor waiting there. Instead, he saw only Hawke, one strong hand on Anders’s shoulder, fingers hidden amidst gray feathers. He was breathing hard. Fenris looked away as Anders lifted his face, knuckles brushing Hawke’s throat beneath his furred pauldron, bare skin grazing his black beard.

‘Ha,’ Carver said, standing to one side as always.

‘Something funny, Carver?’ Hawke asked. ‘Care to let me in on the joke?’

‘Did a fight with one of the first darkspawn curb your sense of humor?’ Carver replied. ‘ _That_ never stopped you before.’

They had not relented since their reunion at the base of the Vimmark Mountains. Even revelations of their past, memories they had never known, truths about their very blood, did not stand in the way of their resilient squabbling. This, Fenris understood, was how brothers were—perhaps it was how sisters were, and all family, though the subtle barbs could prove just as fatal as the more obvious ones.

In Carver’s case, despite how he once bridled at every minor offense, even the Taint itself had not been fatal. Fenris suspected he did not fully understand the strength of his own stock.

He _also_ did not understand the strength of Hawke’s worry, nor its motives, nor the way Anders smoothed his hands through the fur at Hawke’s shoulder, the feel of so familiar a thing all he needed to remember himself. Fenris tasted dark magic in the air, thicker even than the blood that fueled it, and wrinkled his nose as he set his gaze elsewhere, somewhere it would not intrude.

‘Right then: the joke goes like this,’ Hawke said, easing the brunt of his weight onto his staff. Fenris felt the flutter of healing magics one after the other, cool in the wake of the arcane heat. ‘An elf, two grey wardens, and a champion walk into the Deep Roads…’

‘Stop,’ Anders moaned. A laugh lingered somewhere slim beneath. ‘I’ve _heard_ this one before.’

*

They rejoined the others at camp, in the foothills near a road that purported to lead them to Wildervale eventually. After that, Hawke explained, came Tantervale, and then no more vales, but the border of the Free Marches itself.

It chafed Fenris to be traveling north when he had once fought tooth, nail and armored claw to travel south, but their path was not for him to set. Few countries were safe to them now that they traveled with a revolutionary as well as an abomination.

There were templars in every town, but there were _also_ slavers, hard men and women who would see nothing but sovereigns sewn into Fenris’s skin. They would attempt to take his freedom, and Fenris would cut them down, the same as he ever did.

Perhaps he could not begrudge Anders that same right.

 _Maybe we’re more alike than you think, Fenris._

But other matters were yet fair game.

They all crowded in at Hawke’s side around the campfire: Aveline and Isabela, Varric and the witch. Carver slipped away with former-Guardsman Donnic to hunt down stray hares for their supper, muscle too lean in this part of the country to satisfy anyone’s hunger. And Anders sat on a dry stump, examining the brown moss beneath his feet.

Fenris stood next to him, weight braced against a cracked boulder. When Hawke came to the revelation in his tale—while Varric listened, but did not relish someone else taking his place as resident storyteller—Merrill gasped, and Fenris at last turned away.

She of all people did not need to hear that Malcolm Hawke had performed blood magic, then lived a happy life with his family as his reward. It would only give her _ideas._

‘I was wrong,’ Anders murmured. When Fenris glanced toward him, his head was still bowed low over his hands.

‘Be more specific,’ Fenris suggested.

In the distance, Hawke lifted his arms over his head, imitating Janeka’s final charge. The fire cast uneven light on Aveline’s frown of disapproval; the shadows did nothing to lessen the impact of that dire expression.

‘About the magisters.’ Anders toed at a pebble, trapping it beneath the sole of his boot, then scraping it along the ground. Another whisper, this one with no voice, followed by a crunch, and silence, and the fireside laughter. ‘I thought it was just a story the chantry fed us—yet another convenient lie to keep the mages down. I never _dreamed_ it might actually have happened.’

Fenris had never doubted it a day in his life. But then, he had also seen the arrogance of the magisters firsthand. Anders had only his imagination to draw from, and Fenris knew how difficult it was to imagine anything when someone else was always talking.

‘Not all mages are magisters,’ he said. His clasped himself at the elbow, staring past Hawke and into the gathering twilight. Their victory lingered at the back of his mind, some meaningful omen he couldn’t quite glimpse on the horizon. It was not the glint of sunset, for that had long since ended. So it must have been something else. ‘And not all _freedom_ is deserved.’

Men like Corypheus, for example, could have remained imprisoned forever, and Fenris would not lose any sleep over his plight.

‘Mm,’ Anders agreed. He rested his chin against his knees, staring glumly into the fire, and just beyond that—where Hawke passed a hand through his hair, white teeth flashing as he laughed at Isabela’s predictable humor. ‘Do you know—I almost agree with that?’

‘Almost,’ Fenris repeated.

Anders huffed. It was not the same laugh Hawke inspired, but something deeper in his chest, an instinct Fenris barely understood, even after all this time. But—somewhere in the past ten years—he _had_ come to recognize it. ‘It’s just that I don’t think you’ve ever sounded this sensible before.’

‘You would do well to listen now to those speaking _outside_ your head, rather than in it,’ Fenris told him.

Finally, Anders chuckled, a sound as dry as the dead moss rustling beneath his boots. When he lifted his head, it was Hawke he turned to look at.

The winds shifted, and the bitter smoke from the campfire stung Fenris’s throat.


End file.
